Surviving the System: Donors Choose

Friday, October 3, 2008

Donors Choose

I like DonorsChoose.org. The projects are small and personal and I feel a direct connection with the students and teachers of the projects that I've supported. There's a blogger's challenge at Donor's Choose that I've decided to support. If you look at the right sidebar of this blog you'll see a widget that should take you a page of BCPSS projects that I've selected. Give it a look. If you don't like the projects I've selected, pick your own, but I encourage you to give to Baltimore's schools.

1 comment:

Zeek and IOctober 5, 2008 at 6:57 PM
Thank you! I have a donors choose page up and appreciate the blog that is promoting BCPSS teachers. I don't want to say which one is mine since I am trying to remain anonymous. ALL teachers appreciate your generosity. :)
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I love comments. Ads, on the other hand, will be deleted.

About this blog

This will be anonymous because schools can be pretty political, but hopefully constructive. My eldest child entered Kindergarten 16 years ago and I figure I've got another 4.5 years until my youngest finishes. By this fall between the three children we've been enrolled in eight different schools. There have been CST meetings, IEP meetings, PTO meetings, PTA meetings, fund raisers and vast quantities of homework. We are in public schools because we believe that justice starts with a decent free education for all and if I want decent public education being personally involved is the first step.

Glossary and Acronym List

Autism Spectrum - the spread of behaviors that define autistics. The primary areas are difficulties with communication, social interactions and change/lack of order. You can see the official diagnosis criteria here.
CST - Child Support Team, a group (including parents) that meets when a student is having difficulties
ESY - Extended School Year. In our experience, related to special needs kids who go to school over breaks because there will be significant regression in skills over the break if they weren't in a school setting.
FAPE - Free Appropriate Public Education. This is the right of every American child, but is usually a term about creating or finding a learning environment that works for a special needs student.
IEP - Individualized Education Plan. A written plan of goals and ways to achieve them. Typically for special needs students
PTO & PTA - Parent Teacher Organization & Association
SST - Student Support Team, I guess this is the new term that replaces CST